Troy / Wilusa / Ilium

Troy VIII: metope from the temple of Athena showing the sun
god, now in the Altes
Museum (Berlin). This piece of art, made after
c.390 BCE, was one of the first discoveries by Heinrich Schliemann.

Ilion
or Troy:
town in northwestern Asia Minor, famous for the legendary Trojan
War, in which a coalition of Mycenaean warriors captured the
city of king Priam. Homer's
Iliad
deals with an episode from this war.

Troy VIII

When Homer
composed the Iliad,
he could still see one or two temples, the walls, and the well house of
ancient Troy. It was sufficient to create a poem about a might city
that had been destroyed. It was also the beginning of Troy's second
life: in the Archaic Age, the temples were in use again. One of these
was situated directly to the west of the former citadel and may have
been dedicated to Cybele, the Great Mother of the Gods; the second
sanctuary may have been dedicated to Athena and may have stood in the
center of the citadel. There is no direct proof for this temple at this
moment, but it did certainly exist at a later time.

The southwestern wall of Troy VIII

The sanctuary of Troy was not an independent city-state. In the seventh
century, Athens
and Mitylene fought for the possession of nearby
Sigeion, and Troy is not mentioned. In the end, this war was won by the
Athenians - in 560, to be precise - and we know that it became the
place of refuge for the members of the Pisistrad clan, which had once
ruled Athens, but had been expelled in 510. They recognized the
suzereignty of the Persians,
and we know that in 480, when the
Achaemenid king Xerxes
embarked upon a campaign against Greece, he
sacrificed in the temple of Troy (Herodotus,
Histories,
7.43).
In 411, the Spartan commander Mindarus did the same (Xenophon, Hellenica,
1.4).

In 334, it was Alexander's
turn to visit the place, and sacrifice (text).
By
the end of his reign, in 323, he had decided to build a new temple in
Troy (text),
which was in the end build by his successors, Lysimachus,
Seleucus
I Nicator, and the Seleucid
kings. Its statue was based in reports about what the
Palladion must
have looked like, the mysterious statue of Athena that had once fallen
from the sky. This was the beginning of a whole new era, in which Troy
became a city again: a decent, Greek city, with a Bouleterion (town
hall), a mint, and a theater. It could accomodate about 8,000 people.
At the same time, the burial mounds were restored.

Coin of Julius Caesar, showing
Aeneas, making his escape from Troy. Coin from the
Westfälisches Römermuseum, Haltern

In c.250, the ancient wall of Troy VI was renovated again, but it was
probably through diplomacy - and not actual fight at the wall - that
Troy managed to survive
the invasion of the Galatians, who were active in this area in 217. The
town was now regularly visited by "tourists", like Seleucid
king Antiochus
III the Great in 192, and two years later Gaius Livius
Salinator and Lucius Cornelius Scipio (Livy, History of Rome
since its Foundation, 35.43.3, 37.9.7, 37.37.2-3).

It
also survived the unquiet years after the end of the Pergamene
Empire
in 133; yet it may have been a sign of the times that there were houses
built within the walls, in the citadel. In the end, however, the city
was sacked in the course of the First
Mithridatic War by the Roman
commander Gaius Flavius Fimbria (Appian, Mithridatic Wars, 53).
This happened in 85, and although Roman leaders like Sulla and Caesar
promised to restore Troy, the city appears to have been abandoned. A
treaty from 77 shows that the Trojans needed help of their neighbors to
celebrate games.

Troy IX

The Romans had already accepted the legendary Trojans as their
ancestors in the fourth century, and in the third century, this was
sufficiently well-known to be accepted in Alexandria. In the propaganda
of Julius Caesar, it played a role as well: he not only claimed that
Aeneas had come from Troy to Italy and had founded a city over there,
but also claimed that Aeneas's son Ascanius had been surnamed Ilus
("boy from Ilion") and had been the ancestor of the Julius family.
After the assassination of Caesar, his distant relative Octavian
accepted it as well. After he and Marc Antony had defeated Caesar's
assassins Brutus
and Cassius in the Battle
of Philippi (42 BCE), they
repopulated Troy with veterans of the Sixteenth legion.

The Odeum of Troy IX, built by the Roman emperor Augustus

In 20, Octavian, now called Augustus and first emperor of the Roman
Empire, visited Troy, and ordered repairs. An odeon was built on the
site of the old bouleuterion, and from now on, the city was a major
center of ancient tourism. Its coins, for example, commemorated the
Trojan War, and the tie to Roman was stressed by a representation of
the Lupercal in Troy's theater. Yet, there were more economical
activities: we know, for instance, that natural stone was quarried near
Koç Ali, and exported to nearby towns,

The emperor Hadrian
visited the city in 124. He
appears to have ordered new repairs and may have redecorated the odeon,
where his statue has been found. His visit marks the beginning of a
golden age, with the construction of Roman baths, a fountain (nymphaeum), and an
aqueduct. Substantial parts of it survive and can be seen near
Kemerdere.

The next emperor to visit the place was Caracalla
in 214; during his stay, he killed his favorite Festus, who was buried
in ancient style, and received a funeral
mound similar to Achilles and Ajax. He also ordered repairs
to the odeon.

In 267, the Goths pilaged the country, but in the fourth century, Troy
recovered for the last time, perhaps sponsored by Constantantine
the Great
(306-337), who contemplated to move the empire's capital to Troy before
he decided to build Constantinople. Several authors present the city as
still alive (e.g., Synesius,
In Praise of Baldness, 19),
but an earthquake in c.500 meant the end of its prosperity.